介绍:
Next time you head to Paris, you might see more people riding bikes. That is because France has just launched a program that will pay 10,000 people to bike to work.
Twenty of French companies and organizations have agreed to pay their employees 0.25 euro per kilometer for them to bike to work.
Only about 2.4% of French people bike to work. Increasing the number will improve both the health of the population and reduce air pollution. After all, if people are biking, they are getting some necessary exercise, and fewer cars are on the road causing air pollution. While the French are well known for their good shapes, air pollution is a growing problem.
In March, there was so much fog that it was hard to see the Eiffel Tower. For a few days, the city banned half of the cars from its roads, and scientists found that emissions were reduced by 6%.
Taking public transportation is partly paid by French government. Companies will get tax break for giving their employees bus and subway passes. If the experiment is a success, France will expand the experiment to more employers and workers later this year. The goal is to get 5% of French workers to bike to work.
To combat the bad conditions, other European countries have also bike-to-work measures with different kinds of ways such as tax break, payments per kilometer and financial support for buying bicycles. Sweden has even given some citizens bike coaches to get them to be used to biking through cities.
